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They'll be Coming Round the Mountain…

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by Anna Raccoon on April 24, 2014

Or rather they won’t! Was I the only person who raised a silent cheer at the news that the Nepalese Sherpas had walked off Everest, and that thus ‘this year’s Everest expeditions had been forced to cancel’?

Not that the Sherpas actually ‘own’ Everest or have any legal means to stop people climbing the mountain, but their actions have thrown into sharp relief that the wealthy American bankers who sign up to companies with names like ‘Adrenaline Junkies’ are incapable of climbing that mountain without a nanny in the form of a Sherpa to carry their equipment, cook their food, nurse their cuts and bruises and generally shepherd them up and safely down the mountain – to the waiting helicopter which flips them back to the airport and Manhattan where they can extoll their colleagues with tales of their bravery and enterprise.

There are genuinely experienced mountaineers still using their expertise to find new and ever more dangerous routes up Everest, but the vast majority of people who arrive with their brightly coloured kagoules and hand-plucked duck feather sleeping bags which they majestically hand to a waiting Sherpa are tourists with no more climbing ability than your average Minsk whale. Some of them don’t even make it past Base Camp, despite having paid £50,000 to one of the several ‘luxury expedition’ companies now in business.

I do concede that you need to be physically fit to even make the attempt. Personally, I didn’t even make it to Base Camp – not that I was planning an assault on the summit, but I had the mad idea that I would celebrate my 50th Birthday with a hot air ballon flight to see the sun rise over Everest(!!!). Sounded wonderful; but even at the first ‘tea-house’ I was wheezing like an arthritic donkey, and delighted to hear that the balloon flight company had packed up early that year due to bad weather. I allowed myself to be talked into descending the quickest way possible, by white water rafting – another adventure available on the slopes of Everest these days. An unforgettable adventure. Five hysterical gung-ho Americans screaming ‘paddle Goddammit, woman’ at a Raccoon clinging maniacally to the guide ropes with no intention of doing anything so daft as letting go and picking up a paddle….they did volunteer to put me ashore early as we raced past a forest clearing bearing the sign ‘Tiger sanctuary – enter at your own risk’. Bloody comedians…that is the last time I voluntarily enter a washing machine on full spin cycle.

I spent the rest of my time in Nepal wandering round Katmandu just listening to the conversation around me. It is a clash of the cultures. What follows is not a particular desire to knock American culture, its just that Katmandu was full of Americans, many ‘high’ after the obligatory visit to ‘Freak Street’ where once cannabis was legal for the religious sadhus, but is now kept under the counter for the hippy saddos – and I didn’t happen to meet any other British people.

Language that may seem perfectly ‘safe’ and acceptable when addressing a Ukrainian taxi-driver in downtown Manhattan lands like a lead ballon in the gentle world of Buddhism. ‘Oy, Tonto’ isn’t a phrase that I would use when I want a waiter to bring me another beer. You may have become desensitised to the meaning of the phrase ‘motherfu*ker’ – but they haven’t. Personally I’d question the wisdom and manners of addressing your Manhattan Ukranian taxi-driver thus, but it is utter madness to use that term towards a Sherpa guide and expect it to be taken as a term of endearment when you are half way up Everest.

In fairness, Ueli Steck, the offending westerner, was a) Swiss, and b) an experienced mountaineer attempting a traverse of the mountain without oxygen and without a sherpa guide. The principle still holds though – ‘Motherfu*ker’ is a term capable of giving great offence. Especially when the Sherpa is earnestly engaged in fixing guide ropes on the lethal Lhotse Face, the better that another season’s worth of western idiots can just ‘walk’ up Everest; he thinks you are responsible for the lump of ice that just landed on his head; and an apology would have been a better idea under the circumstances. Ueli Steck ended the day leaving all his equipment behind and being chased out of Base Camp Two back down the mountain by a 100 strong group of Sherpas hurling rocks and knives. It must have been a terrifying experience, and I’m sure he is, as reported, ‘traumatised’.

A century ago, the Sherpas were, literally, uneducated mountain goats, hauling the merchandise of traders across mountains where no one else could go. Edmund Hillary changed all that for them – 60 years ago. Since then, they have earned good money shepherding westerners up and down ‘their’ mountain; in the 1970s it was only a handful of experienced climbers each year – then the ‘commercial companies’ stepped in with their ‘Everest experience’. Now the Sherpas have responsibility for getting some 500 people a year to the peak – many of whom are not best suited, mentally or physically for the challenge. They are no longer the cream of the mountaineering crop. Many are people who have paid a lot of money for ‘their’ Sherpa to deliver their ‘Everest experience’. That change in the clienteles attitude has coincided with the benefit of good education for the current Sherpas over the past 20/30 years, courtesy of western money.

Last week, an avalanche buried 16 Sherpas, engaged in fixing the ropes and ladders that would allow this year’s crop of climbers to traverse the mountain safely. 16 times helicopters ferried limp bodies down the mountain for ritual burial as their fellow Sherpas watched in silence. Base Camp One was already full of extreme sports enthusiasts who had paid up to £50,000 each for the authentic ‘Sherpa risking his life for you and then calmly cooking your dinner’ experience.

They are furious that they won’t get a refund. The Sherpas have simply walked off the mountain and don’t intend to return.

Rest in peace Everest. Nursing your dead and litter in your snowy bosom. I suppose there is a whole lot b*llsh*tt*ng going on in the background to try and restore a suitable servility among the Sherpas. There are still white porters, but they are not expected to hump luggage up the side of a dangerous mountain or along a steamy jungle path to make a TV documentary or photograph frogs, whatever. The last outpost of colonialist expectations. Swearing at them, very indecently, it seems is no longer an option. A Swiss swearer, at least it is alliterative. I always fancied walking part up to Everest, just for the scenery and views, and to look at the night skies of my childhood, now lost to street lighting. As for ‘white water rafting’, I didn’t even last the whole week on a no engine broads sail yacht in my mid teens. Trying to sail full tilt under a bridge after a sudden squall…..then ramming the bank violently 3 foot short of piling….I ran off to my parents in Yarmouth. Swallows and Amazon not for me.

I was always curious as a child as to why Hilary and even Hunt, who didn’t summit, got loads of publicity while virtually nothing was said of Tensing. It was as if he was simply a bag carrier . In fact later much more was said -and indeed it was Hilary that did this. What a curious place Nepal must be though – that was where the entire royal family were wiped out by one of their own? Royalty in Nepal was v popolar in the 70s as I recall but think that deteriorated before being put down for good – isn’t there some neo-Maoist faction there now?

I thought Joanna Lumley had invited all the sherpas to live with her in Aldershot.

I have to say I do remember Sherpa Tensing being very celebrated but was only dimly aware that Hilary was from New Zealand for much longer. I was born into the dying embers of that Romanesque notion that a citizen of Empire was indeed British, regardless of which pink bit of the globe he started out from, although the lamb always retained it’s ethnicity I recall.

I listened to a programme on BBC radio 4 a couple years ago were they talked about the first ascent on Everest. Apparently Tensing & Hillary agreed that the “team” would be recognised as the first to the summit. Tensing subsequently said that Hillary was first. However, near his death, Hillary stated that it was indeed Tensing who was at the summit first. I’ve been looking around on the web for more info – to no avail!!!

@cityman Good BBC4 show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMdN_3y9CKA Interestingly, with reference to Anna’s blog, it appears that the Hunt expedition almost never succeeded because of a “strike” by the sherpa’s but Tenzing is given the credit of having been able to persuade them to continue on to establish the final camp, from where he and Hillary did the final 2,000 feet.

Absolutely fantastic programme. I had not realised how much controversy there was around the “very first” man on Everest. The video devotes around a quarter of its time to that question – human compulsion with competition, I suppose.

I was also amazed that the bond of these 2 men in their mutually extra human & mutually reliant goal could be broken by the subsequent shredding of that bond – I imagine they were never allowed to carry that complete bond forward in time due to their differing cultures. Cultures which had brought them to view their achievement in different ways and which continued unabated in their division of these 2 great men.

Having been part of a team which was “pipped to the post” in an expedition we did a couple years ago by an English expedition who had sneakily found out our intentions and got there first by a certain amount of deception, I am interested in the risks and lengths people – well men really – take to out compete others.

*** I allowed myself to be talked into descending the quickest way possible, by white water rafting – another adventure available on the slopes of Everest these days. An unforgettable adventure. Five hysterical gung-ho Americans screaming ‘paddle Goddammit, woman’ at a Raccoon clinging maniacally to the guide ropes with no intention of doing anything so daft as letting go and picking up a paddle….they did volunteer to put me ashore early as we raced past a forest clearing bearing the sign ‘Tiger sanctuary – enter at your own risk’. Bloody comedians…that is the last time I voluntarily enter a washing machine on full spin cycle. ***

You can understand how our Landlady has managed to beat cancer twice, can’t you? There ain’t nuthin’ she won’t face head-on and she’ll break its nose and knock its teeth out if she has to! She’d have been OK in that Tiger sanctuary, you know, and probably emerged wearing a very nice striped furry hat, carrying a matching handbag and wearing some matching slippers too!

A great post Anna, which articulates my own feelings about the paternalistic view of the Great White Colonial towards the hewers of coal and carriers of water. I only hope that the dissenting sherpas can sustain themselves without the benefit of the off Holy Groat cast in their direction…

But they’ll be back – once having tasted the fruits of the tourist dollar, albeit at the price of some accompanying insults, it will be impossible to return to the pre-tourism life. That’s life and that’s progress.

I’ll not be going, neither shall I join the caterpillars of crazy folk trekking to the North or South Poles – they’ve all been done already, so no need for me to prove it can be done. Far better for folk to use their skills and resources to do something ‘first’, like finding a cure for dementia or developing guilt-free electricity.

I’ve not been there and have no intention of going. I’m scared of heights and get a nosebleed when standing on a thick carpet. However I have seen the pictures and one thing that strikes me is the sheer volume of garbage on the mountain. It’s worse than the aftermath of Glastonbury or one of the eco-warrier camps that the Rent-a-mob set up every time someone pulls their strings. I’m glad the Sherpas have had enough. If they have any sense they should double the fees, offering a small discount to anyone who will take their rubbish home with them

I couldn’t agree more re. Everest. An idiot of my acquaintance, requiring solace after his latest enterprise had gone decidely wrong, decided that some success was necessary. So he ‘climbed’ Everest. I was unimpressed and asked him if he had grabbed a burger at the MacDonalds at the summit.

I’m not so sure they ‘earn good money’. The reports I read said one of the main reasons they walked off was becuase they wanted compensation for a death to be doubled to $12,000. Even in Nepal that surely doesn’t make up for the loss of a breadwinner.

Also a quibble about the ‘limp bodies’. You really need to read up on rigour mortis. After a few hours any body will be rigid in the pose in which it lay at death.